calorie count

Whether you are a new graduate off your campus meal plan and living on your own for the first time, or just need tips on how to stock your kitchen without breaking the bank, below are tips and staples for eating healthy at home when it’s a setting for one.

Plan Your Menu

Meal planning reduces stress, saves money, and reduces food waste. A fun money saver is to pick a “theme” each week. For example, if you pick Mexican food for one week, versatile ingredients for various meals might include salsa, black beans, avocados, cheese, corn, and whole wheat tortillas. With these ingredients plus staples (see below) you could make plenty fromblack bean quesadillas to spicy egg scrambles and southwestern salads or wraps.

Minimize Mess and Save Time with One Pot Methods

Slow cookers are inexpensive, come in many sizes, and recipes that use them do not require a lot of effort or clean up. Same idea goes with anything that stir-fries and just uses one skillet. Read Full Post >

This week Calorie Count unveiled Calorie Camp, a new healthy-living social networking site that allows users to connect with other members, share status updates, daily progress reports, and receive community support and feedback.

“Technology is playing an increasing role in weight loss and daily heath and wellness maintenance,” said Rachel Berman, RD, CSR, CD/N, Director of Nutrition for CalorieCount.com.

People use the internet for business, communication, e-commerce, education, entertainment and more recently, for weight loss and healthy lifestyle maintenance. With the number of diet and weight loss-related mobile applications increasing, people continue to look to technology to aid in their healthy living efforts.

“On CalorieCount.com, members utilize a variety of free tools,” said Berman. “Users can look up nutrient information of foods, keep track of what they’ve eaten throughout the day and log activity completed and calories burned.”

You may have spent the past couple of months gorging on holiday treats, avoiding the gym, and making promises that you’ll get back on track come January. Have you starting living your healthy lifestyle yet or are you still overcoming a holiday hangover? Either way, here are tips to help you recover from your holiday indulgences and make healthy changes all year long.

1) Avoid fads

At the beginning of each New Year, we are bombarded with the marketing of diet and exercise products and services. Don’t be fooled by lofty promises of ‘easy & fast weight loss.’ Restrictive fad diets, and extreme exercise might result in weight loss but it will not get you very far. Research shows that extreme programs are unrealistic to maintain for the long term and once you go off of it, you are likely to gain back all the weight you lost, plus more. When we make small, manageable changes to our everyday routines, we are more likely to have long term health success. What healthy changes are realistic for you? If you can incorporate one of these changes at a time, and be patient with reaching your goals, come March, you will still be on the path to a healthy lifestyle. Having support from your loved ones or a community can help make those changes stick!

Over the river and through the woods or wherever else you plan to go this year, traveling for the holidays can throw a wrench into your healthy lifestyle efforts. From impulse snack buys to big sit-down dinners, it is true many Americans gain about a pound each holiday season that sticks and accumulates over the years. Despite hectic holiday travel, you can avoid that pound or more by following a few easy steps.

Plan Ahead

Packing healthy snacks is always a smart decision when you are on the go. If there is a chance you may get stuck in an airport or in traffic, plan ahead to stave off your hunger with an easy-to-pack snack like trail mix, a protein bar, fresh fruit, a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, or any other non-perishable snack. With nutritious, tasty options at your fingertips, you will not be as tempted by less-than-ideal snacks for sale and will be less likely to show up at your destination ravenous, ready to overeat. In addition, waiting many hours between meals can contribute to a slower metabolism. So if you think you should skip the snack and save the calories for later, think again.

Mary Hartley, RD, MPH, is the director of nutrition for Calorie Count, providing domain expertise on issues related to nutrition, weight loss and health. She creates original content for weekly blogs and newsletters, for the Calorie Count library, and for her popular daily Question-and-Answer section, Ask Mary. Ms. Hartley also furnishes direction for the site features and for product development.

If you are an American adult, there’s a one in three chance that you have pre-diabetes, and in five to ten years, pre-diabetes will progress to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a serious metabolic condition that ravages the circulatory system over time, but the long-term damage may begin during the early stages. The good news is that you can reverse pre-diabetes by natural means.

The difference between pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes is a matter of degree. When the Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG) is 100 – 125 mg, it is called pre-diabetes; when the FBG crosses over 126 mg, the name changes to type 2 diabetes. Diabetes has to do with the way glucose travels from the bloodstream into the cells where it is burned for fuel. In pre-diabetes and most type 2, the pancreas still makes insulin, but that insulin cannot help the cells to uptake glucose. Glucose, called ‘sugar’, builds up in the blood and ruins the little capillaries in every part of the body. One quarter of all new type 2 diabetics already have eye damage at the time of diagnosis.

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The information provided within this site is strictly for the purposes of information only and is not a replacement or substitute for professional advice, doctors visit or treatment. The provided content on this site should serve, at most, as a companion to a professional consult. It should under no circumstance replace the advice of your primary care provider. You should always consult your primary care physician prior to starting any new fitness, nutrition or weight loss regime.